


Brothers of Mine

by trulyunruly



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brothers Ri Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hobbit Kink Meme, Kink Meme, Post BoFA, Some Description of Violence, TW: Blood, kink meme fill, the Brothers Ri, tw: death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 19:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trulyunruly/pseuds/trulyunruly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dori did not want to be the fusspot oldest brother, the one who mothered and nagged and annoyed his brothers to death. He did not want to be mocked or resented when he sought only to take care of them. Sometimes, he hated that it was always left to him to be the sensible one while Nori ran wild and Ori daydreamed.</p><p>But he was their brother. It was all he knew how to be and all he wanted to be. To live without that would be unthinkable.</p><p>After the Battle of Five Armies, Dori's first instinct is to find his brothers.</p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">Written for a prompt on hobbit-kink: "I was thinking what if Ori and Nori died in the Battle of Five Armies? How would Dori react being the sole-survivor of his small broken family? How would he feel, would someone come to his side? What would he do when he finds out about their death? (or finds them dead on the battle field?) Since my head cannon is that Dori basically raised Ori and partly raised Nori before the middle dwarf ran off." </span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this today on a whim, dared to post it after letting some friends read it. I hope it fulfils what the prompter asked for! It focuses mostly on Dori and finding Nori and Ori after the BOFA.

When he was younger, Dori sometimes detested being a big brother.

He would grow to regret thinking such a thing, of course, but when his mother had swanned off for the night and Nori wouldn't eat and Ori cried and cried, Dori would sometimes steal a moment of respite and wish that he had a different life or different family or just different. He didn't want to be the fussy, mumsy Dwarf; he didn't want his brothers to resent his attentions or mock him; he only wanted Nori and Ori to be safe and looked after and for himself to get a moment of calm. He only wanted everything to be alright.

For some time, it was.

~~~

He finds Nori first.

The plains before the Lonely Mountain have been ravaged, torn open like a vein, and Dori staggers through the destruction. Behind him, brothers and friends wail and curse over the bodies of their kin. Dori vaguely remembers lurching past Balin, bent like a broken branch, over the stained sheet covering what is left of Fili and Kili. Even that sight had stirred nothing in Dori's breast, only stoked the fire driving the drumbeat of NoriOriNoriOri.

In later years, he will count himself lucky. Nori looks as though he is asleep - it seems a small kindness from the gods. He lies half-propped up on the corpse of a warg, one hand splayed across his belly and one thrown out, as if he were reaching for his brother. His skin is pale and - when Dori extends a trembling hand to just brush his cheek - a cloying cold, one that seems to seat deep even in Dori's bones. Aside from the bloom of scarlet in the hollow of his throat, the vines of blood crawling down his neck and dripping life into the ruined land, Dori might have believed his brother to live still.

Propriety and duty forgotten, Dori heaves Nori into his lap, takes his weight across his thighs and cradles his head against his heart. His hair is loose and tangled, matted with dirt and sweat, and Dori's fingers are half-buried in it before he remembers that there is no point in fixing Nori's braids if he won't squirm and complain underneath them. 

How long they lie there, Dori cannot be sure. At some point, he begins humming a song, a funeral dirge turned lullaby, if only to stave off the heat building behind his eyes, the tight throb of grief in his gut. Nori grows cooler; blood seeps onto Dori's armour and leaves an ugly smear when he finally pulls away.

"Ori," he says to Nori, "I have to find Ori."

Yet he cannot bring himself to leave behind his little brother, the boy who Dori always believed hated him but for whom he would've given his life in an instant. Now he's crying, sobbing even as he hauls Nori onto his back, because he left Nori on his own so much in life that he could not - would not - now. 

"We'll find Ori," he tells Nori as they strive onwards, "and I'll make such a good home for him here, the home I wanted for both of you, and you'll never have to steal or lie again, never, never, never - "

The sun is climbing higher and higher in a grey sky, battling as Dori battles to shine. Dori makes to sidestep a pile of Orcs, all mangled to various degrees - and that when he sees it, peeping out from under those filthy red-stained bodies: a flash of a pale brown sleeve, a peep of white fingers clawing at the mud.

Dori shouts. Nori falls to the ground with a thump but Dori can scarcely think. All that matters is shoving aside the Orcs, even as they peel apart with bloody squelches, getting to the bottom, to Ori - 

Only it isn't Ori. It once was a young Dwarf who liked to write and draw as much as he wanted to be big and brave. Now Ori's eyes stare blankly at the sky; his grip on his axe is loose; his legs twisted the wrong way, his chest concave, his lips flecked black, he's still, he's too still - 

Dori can't even speak. He simply reaches, leans over Ori and frames his face with his hands as if his life force could restore him. A crow flutters overhead; the shadow is thrown over Ori's face, turns him grey and lost, and Dori cries out.

He's found hours later, both brothers in lap, unresponsive and inconsolable. Hardly anyone will mutter about the brothers Ri in the years to come; many were lost at the Battle of Five Armies, least of all Thorin Oakenshield and his worthy nephews, and some given lives will be barely a footnote in the books of history.

Dori, however - every year of his life is one that might have been Nori's or Ori's. He lives long and alone, dogged everywhere he goes by two shadows.


End file.
